Once Upon a Time in Manhood

Once Dallas Goldtooth was a boy. Now he is a man. This summer, the comedian, writer, and activist revisits the cinema of his youth, highlighting on-screen expressions of masculinity he watched growing up. Goldtooth (Mdewakanton Dakota/Diné) , a founding member of the Indigenous sketch comedy troupe the 1491s and writer/actor in the series Reservation Dogs, charts his journey to manhood across a curated selection of iconic films from the ’80s and ’90s. He questions how the culture we consume shapes us, understanding that the male leads in each film didn’t just reflect masculinity but actively shaped how it was understood. With the series Once Upon a Time in Manhood, Goldtooth offers up different views of masculine-coded gender expression and revisits how young viewers in the late 20th century came to understand male adulthood. For him, these iconic characters went beyond the abstract, serving as reference points that informed his identity. Skipping ahead, the series concludes with Taika Waititi’s 2010 coming of age story Boy as a reflection of how films land and live on in a child’s imagination. Once Upon a Time in Manhood asks both what we inherited from these representations, and what we decided to leave behind. Goldtooth will introduce the films Willow and The Last of the Mohicans in-person to audiences on Friday, July 10, and Saturday, July 11.